Mid 22nd

I’m around halfway to 23 and I just finished EH Red Fen. So far I’m soloing – I’ve done EH Sentinels – that was my first level including MOTU part 1. I also did EH Web of Chaos with Rift, altho I didn’t get the streak bonus since apparently it counts for it when you do the heroic. But at least I got the hard diff bonus so each net me 40-60k – not bad at all.

Since I’m halfway to 23 I still have MOTU 2 and 3, Carnival, DQ, Druid’s Deep, High Road and EGH before 25. Granted, if I can’t hit 25 by the time I’m done with all of those I should probably hang up my sorc. But it does tell me something – I better get Carnival and DQ done while I can still get the streak bonus from those. Although I don’t look forward to DQ since the run to those are boring and the quests themselves far too long. True, you could do Wiz King within an hour, shorter if you 2 or 3 man it. But Chains of Flame is just a long romp there and not a very appealing quest. Sorry, I bet some love it but I find it tedious. Oh, I forgot VON. There are some excellent quests eventho the butchered the staple VON3. Frankly I think it’s dumb – back in the day it was hard now it’s easier since people run it on destinies. But seriously – cutting the XP in half just make the 25+ quests drearier because the second xpack just sucked the big one. Lots and lots. I always feel queasy thinking about doing those quests. Mostly because of the purple hell mist but also because they lack inspiration. Sure, they did add lots of XP to what goes up but I just don’t like it. The end is terrible because of that mist.

By then however I should be ready for the new raids – so between that and the last 3 levels I’m sure I’ll get those done eventually. No thanks to the latest xpack.

On the gear front I lament that stone heart never came in a +3 insightful variant and only the robe did. Sure, I could use the stone but I don’t get one. And I almost wish I had a fully unlocked twilight but the problem with that one is the butchered universal spell lore. It would cut the crit chance into half for glacial and impulse since there are no other suitable items. I still have the epic challenge boots for acid and I’m thinking long and hard about the current orbs – the one from high road (I have it for acid). In retrospect I wish Turbine would’ve made the winter recipes more useful. Ideally I’d find a scepter or similar with impulse of cold lore. And then add a good solid high end glaciation recipe too it. However the max the Eberron one goes is 78 and the Eveningstar while higher is limited to armor and shields. Useless (and you can’t use it with orb, since orb is shield).

So I completely ignored the winter event this year; the Eveningstar is completely worthless. Basically you do it if you want to collect pets. You certainly don’t do it for the glaciation. And they’ve made the Eberron similarly worthless – altho cold burst does not increase ML (yet). The glaciation you put on sticks does.

If I was Air savant specked I’d find lots of lighting stuff. From the challenge bracers to the EGH necklace. That would make it possible for me to hold other secondary stuff without issue. As it is now I’m stuck trying to fit impulse, glaciation and corrosion across 3 items – I can use the boots for now but for every level the power of it gets weaker. My solution (at least before when I didn’t do Shiradi) was a corrosion orb with glaciation stick. The problem will always be of course that the further away you get from 20, the less effective the challenge boots become. You can increase the spell power by adding items, but at the same time you’ll struggle between using cool stuff like the orbs and not have the lore you want. Thus the pain of universal lore. It was lowered to a paltry 6% so if I decide to mix cold and acid I generally do a cold stick with acid lore – so that the acid orb adds spell power, cold stick adds cold power and my acid lore gets a boost. However cold will proc with a 6% to crit.

The issue here is the force stuff – I’d love for it to proc big – but with a acid orb and cold acid lore stick there’s no room for force. The nether orb alleviates that somewhat; by adding a red augment slot and therefor make the awkward impulse/cold/acid combo possible. That combined with the sage bracers, providing kinetic lore. 15% using the heroic ones and 18% using the level 26 ones. (or is it 27?). At 28 I use EE netherorb with conjuration bonus, boosting acid via stick (with red augment) providing glaciation with 10% universal spell lore chance to crit, acid with 19% I think (from the stick) and force 18% from bracers.

The point of the thunderforged items were to make that a little stronger. Stick with acid and stick with impulse and universal lore. Acid would get an impressive 22% crit chance and Impulse and glaciation 18% universal spell lore. Add to that +6 conjuration and +7 spell pen. I would still get +5 Evocation from sage necklace and use a cloak with +2 universal focus augmented by a few more things to make things like Necromancy stronger and Enchantment.

The other choice (and one I’m still thinking about) is a staff instead. Acid with glaciation and impulse augments (2 red slots) +6 Conjuration plus the exceptional +1 DC and 18% universal spell lore. It means less material overall, a slightly less power impulse and glaciation attack and less acid crit chance. It also means somewhat of a stronger conjuration attack (acid bursts and the like) but weaker spell pen. And trust me, I’m not a triple Wiz so I’ll need all the spell pen I can get.

Then again – maybe I’m making stuff for the now for something that will be trivial in the future; doing a triple wiz is not all that hard with the change of xp requirement. I already have one in the bank. In fact ideally I’d love 3 cleric, 3 FvS and 2 more Wiz (already got my 3 sorc). That would add +3 more Evocation and +9 Spell pen. So making that stick might actually be a waste of material.

Come to think of it while conjuration is still a good goal my second stick might be better off sporting +6 Necromancy or +6 Evocation. Altho as far as Evocation goes I still have the sage necklace, making the difference rather small. And add +3 more Evocation and I might be wasting my time there. And that’s the whole point with thinking ahead – maybe I’m about to make a stick using rare components that when I finally get there it’s more or less a waste of time. Which brings me to the journey there. The idea as far as I can tell is one of doing 2 more iconic for Wiz, so I can add both wiz spell pen and 30 more repair.

Then 3 cleric – I don’t think it would be very useful to do iconic since you have to get to 28 before you can TR again and I don’t need the light damage from the iconic. And of course 3 fvS – again – I’m better off doing regular heroic than iconic something. After all – the goal is to hit 20 and turn around again.